the even older joke I almost included in this week’s sermon

A little girl was drawing. Her dad came up and tried to work out what it was she was drawing, but he couldn’t find anything familiar in the series of swirls, shapes and squiggles.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m drawing a picture, daddy” was the factually accurate response.

“What are you drawing a picture of?” asked the day, incorrectly ending his question with a preposition.

“I’m drawing a picture of God, daddy,” came the innocent reply.

“But, darling, nobody knows what God looks like,” said dad.

[altogether now with the punchline]

The girl didn’t look up from her masterpiece and said, “They will when I have finished, daddy.”

I decided against retelling that joke in the sermon on Sunday morning because it is so familiar. If you are there you can work out the moment when it would have been included. It would have led into this point – if you want to know what God looks like (not physically but in character), we do know. We have the perfect description in the Bible’s accounts of Jesus of Nazareth: that’s what the incarnation is all about after all!